SEXUAL HARASSMENT
Civil Society protests as the Supreme Court gives clean chit to the CJI in Sexual Harassment Case.
The New Leam Staff
The Supreme Court of India gave clean chit to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) in the alleged sexual harassment case against him.
The court announced its judgment on Monday, 6th May 2019 after a report submitted by an in-house inquiry committee stated that the allegations made against the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi were baseless.
Earlier this month a 35 year old woman who worked as a Junior Assistant at the Supreme Court accused the CJI of sexual harassment and torture. The women filed her complaint by writing an affidavit addressed to 21 judges of the Supreme Court.
Later on the case was heard by an “extraordinary committee” which was constituted to look into the issue but there were several questions raised over the committee. As the committee was headed by the CJI himself which was considered to be against the spirit of law and justice.
The CJI and many other judges have been refuting the claims of sexual harassment on the basis of it being a conspiracy.
Utsav Bains the lawyer who stated that he was bribed to frame the CJI, his involvement has aggravated the conspiracy theory further. Another committee headed by Justice Ananga Kumar Patnaik was constituted to look into the conspiracy theory of this case.
On 23rd April, a special bench headed by Justice Bobde was constituted to look in to the sexual harassment allegations. The bench included Justice N.V. Ramana and Justice Indira Banerjee but later on Justice Ramana was replaced by Justice Indu Malhotra after the complainant showed displeasure over lack of presence of female judges in the committee.
The complainant later on refused to appear before the court on the grounds that she was not provided any lawyer, no audio and video recording of the proceedings were to be taken, she was denied to get a hard copy of her statement and also there were no proves which could state that proceedings followed the guidelines stated by law. She did not appear in the court and the court rather than addressing her concern decided to go ahead with the trial in the absence of the complainant.
On May 5th 2019, the website of the Supreme Court displayed a notice which said that the in-house committee that was constituted to review the allegations made on the CJI, has found no substance in the complaint made by the woman. The notice further stated that the in-house committee has submitted its report to the Supreme Court which cannot be published publicly.
The Supreme Court of India on the basis of the report has provided a clean chit to the CJI. The decision although is not well received amongst the civil society group as they accuse the highest court for being biased in this issue specifically.
More than 50 people were protesting outside the Supreme Court until all of them were arrested and taken to the Mandir Marg police station and article 144 was imposed outside the court. Activists have criticized the decision of the judiciary stating it to be unfair and unjust.
The case has raised several questions especially on the independent nature of the institution.
